[3.5] Kitava's Spiriteater - Necro | Kitava's Thirst&Soulwrest | 1.5 mil shaper dps
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Yes, a Kitava's Thirst build! And it ~ should~ even be shaper viable -without- breaking your bank!
 In a nutshell this build abuses the combination of Unearth & Kitavas Thirst & Spirit Offering & Mistress of Sacrifice to simultaneously stack obscene amounts of cast speed while recovering a bunch of ES. But your damage source are actually phantasms and skelis. If you don´t follow - don´t worry it will get a lot worse. Oh yeah, this is not quite a noob friendly build to get set up but I will go over the main interactions on the hows&whys of this build and Link to the relevant wiki entry for almost everything used here. Pros: +Decently Cheap~ +Main movement is Bodyswap & Unearth +Somewhat tanky with decent amount of es&hp recovery +Decent clear speed +Drops bosses easily +Little micromanagment +Can run any content & map (phys reflect & no regen is an annoyance though) ~Probably HC viable if you skip the auras for MoM (loses about 30% dps) Cons: -No trillion billion dps -Doesn´t insta clear 3 screens in advance -Kitava's Thirst will troll you with trigger chances ´though this does more damage to your ego than anything -Plays like a normal summoner till around lvl 55~ Main Mechanics
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Now buckle up you are in here for a ride. Stacking silly amounts of cast speed
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The asendancy Mistress of Sacrifice does two key things for this build.
First off it increases ones cast/attack speed for every corpse consumed recently. Seems straightforward enough however if you pair it with Unearth you actually generate corpses faster the more cast speed you have. So, the more corpses you consume the faster one can create new corpses which allows us to consume more corpses which... Now before you start considering infinity it won´t go that far but it can easily grant you anything between 80% to 130% additional increased cast speed. But hang on - Unearth has a corpse limit of 10 so how do we actually keep consuming corpses that fast? This is where Kitavas Thirst comes into play. With some specific gem setups unearth can reach 100 mana cost which allows you to trigger your Offering with Kitavas Thirst. Demonstration Great now we can claim corpse killer number 1 and the most cast speed of probably any summoner but what´s the point? Recovering energy shield in silly ways
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Since we are already spamming silly amounts of offerings we may as well abuse the second major bonus from Mistress of Sacrifice - 50% of your offerings affect yourself. Recasting an already active offering may seem pointless but Spirit Offering would disagree.
The important part here is "Minions gain 2% of their maximum life as Extra maximum energy shield for each corpse consumed" Wow, thats a mouth full - how does increasing our max es actually recover es? Well, spirit offering doesn´t just increase max es but it actually *gives* you that es directly. Once spirit offering runs out (or gets recast *winkwink*) it only removes any es beyond your default max es. Follwing example: -You have 5k hp&2k es -Take 2k damge leaving you at 5k hp 0 es -You cast Spirit offering and consume 10 corpses -You have 5k hp and 500 es -Recast spirit offering again with 10 corpses -You have 5k hp and 1k es -And so on till you reach your max es In practical terms how much es does this actually recover? Weeellll, this ain´t so easy to quantify - as a rough estimate you can count on about 450 es per second just from unearth & kitavas thirst In additon you can setup CastWhenDamageTaken with Spirit Offering which may give around an additional 650 es per second - so give or take 1.1k es per second + any enemies you kill. For those more mathy here the breakdown on how I reached those numbers:
Some math
For this build PoE gives about 5k hp and a CastRate of 6 for Unearth with spell echo. As an estimate lets say CWDT 1 triggers every 0.8 second (250 ms cooldown + made up 500 ms till the next damage). Both are assumed to trigger with the corpse limit of 10 from unearth since Kitava only triggers on 1/3 of the casts. Health * Rate of max es * consumed corpses * offering effectivnis on you * (cast rate unearth * trigger rate Kitava * spell echo which doesn´t trigger kitava + "cast rate CWDT") = es regen 5000 * 0.02 * 10 * 0.5 * ( 6 * 0.3 * 0.5 + 1 / 0.8) = 1075 One should take all those numbers with a bag of salt (random distribution of Kitavas Triggers craps all over consistency) but the main point is you recover quite a bit and usually more the harder things get. How does this build actually do damage?
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This is where it all comes togther. Soulwrest lends itself naturally to our corpse eating tendencies. For general clearing Unearth respawns your phantasms right in the center of your target. In addition with all that cast speed Bodyswap basicly turns your Unearth into a movement skill which allows you to sustain everything on the go. Speaking of cast speed for bosses you can use your skeletons for additional dps which you can respawn to the cap in about 500ms flat.
But wait there is more!*trigger jingle* 1. Since we are spawing a ton of minions we don´t mind them dying at all so screw all minion health nodes and welcome Minion Instability for some free extra damage against the thougher bosses. 2. The node Spiritual Aid combined with all the cast speed gives Unearth itself some nice dps to clear the weaker mobs. 3. Kitavas Thirst still has three more open sockets to run some utilities like curses for example. 4. Unearth is in the perfect position to trigger Elemental Equilibrium for our minions with the right jewel: I have spotted a flaw in your master plan!
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Isn´t respawning the phantasms so fast hurting your dps?
Maybe but it hardly matters. On one hand you do respawn them right on top of the enemy. In addition against strong bosses the fast respawn turns into extra dps via minion instability. Isn´t the inconsistency of Kitavas Thirst hurting your clear speed? Yes but there are couple of inbuild offsets for this. For one the faster the cast speed the less consistency is an issue. Another is Offering on CWDT which gives some base consistency. Phantasm also tend to teleport with you once you reach enough distance. Lastly Unearth itself does decent enough damage to keep the train going till either your Phantasms catch up or Kitava starts triggering again. However once in the blue moon you will start a map and solidly cast unearth for 2 seconds and start wondering if Kitava is on a holiday. Won´t the mana consumption with Kitavas Thirst prevent you from running any good auras? No, you can run two 50% auras + lvl 1 clarity without any issues. Having around 250 unreserverd mana & 300 mana regen allows you to sustain a cast rate of 6 with unearth. Reaching those numbers is quite easy thanks to many strong mana nodes in the witch area and some help from Arcane Surge and Pure Talent. All that es recovery won´t do you any good if most of your ehp comes from life. The main goal is to keep you at full life against minor damage to survive the big hits which works mostly fine. The build still runs some solid 428 hp regen thanks to life regen from the tree and Soulwrest. Combined with instant life recovery flask one shouldn´t struggle much unless standing in Shapers beam is ones pass time (not judging). Build
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Build with level 95
Build with level 55
Bandit reward is without question Alira for the sweet sweet mana regen and I guess 15% all res is also nice. The build follows these goals for the passive tree: 1. Grab all the noteable damage nodes for our minions. 2. Find enough mana & mana regen to support Kitavas Thirst + our Auras 3. Use all life nodes even remotly close to our path 4. Get some special nodes/Keystones needed for the build 5. Lastly take any strong ES-nodes if it doesn´t take too much effort But I love to mess up the passive tree in my own way! Sure just keep the following points in mind: 1. To run two 50% auras a decent amount of "Reduced mana reservation" is needed 2. Elemental Equilibrium, Spiritual Aid, Minion Instability and Whispers of Doom are the major nodes for this build 3. If you are running Pure Talent (and you should) than finding a suitable Path to Scion is well worth it. Essential Gear
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1. Obviously, Kitavas Thirst. Outside of doing minor things like ~enabling the build~ it also allows you to offload a bunch of the micormanagy things like recasting Offerings and Curses. 2. Soulwrest almost looks like it was designed for this build. Gives some use for excess corpse consumption, offers a bunch of cast speed & damage to Unearth and massivly boosts the needed mana regen. However as a curveball here the build is actually playable without it! *O* I´ll go over it in more detail in the leveling section but until you pick up Soulwrest Severed in Sleep and Victario's Charity are decent alternatives. 3. Any Body armour with 6L (3 Blue & 3 Green). Unearth has to reach the needed Mana Cost for Kitava's Thirst and the easiest way to do so is to link as many mana expensive support gems as possible which means useing a 6 link. 4. Since we are running Elemental Equilibrium a jewel with "Add x Lightning Damage to spells" is required. 5. The tree has been routed with Pure talent in mind for the excellent mana regen it gives. However if you are so inclined you can consider other options with a bit of rerouting like Shavronne's Revelation, Dream Fragments or just plain more mana regen&mana on gear is worth considering. Recommended Gear
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The rest of the gear is just a matching between uniques which offer more damage and the survivability from good rares. The recommendations are centered around the following: 1. Max ele res 2. ~20% Chaos resist without flask 3. At least 155 total dex 4. 5k hp 5. 2k es 6. 250 unreserverd mana 7. 300 mana regen 8. Any bonus damage for our minions Basic gear
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1. The jewel Careful Planning covers all your dex needs in the right passiv spot. This makes gearing overall a lot easier and turns kind of into a requirment the more uniques you plan to use.
2. For other Jewels anything with physical minion damage and flat life is great. 3. At least one ring or amulet with "x Mana Regeneration per Second" smooths out the mana regen a lot. 4. Voidbringer is a decent option during leveling to start useing Kitavas Thirst with level 55 (I´ll go into more detail during the leveling section). 5. For flasks any physical damage reduction, instant life recovery and chaos resist cover the blind spots in this build for the thougher fights. Basicly a flask setup like this fits the bill: Endgame gear
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To be clear the following recommendations aren´t needed to manage endgame with this build but they will help you to push the damage potential. 1. Grip of the Council give a substantial push to your minion damage. Only downside are the poor hp&es values compared to a normal rare. 2. Hungry Loop frees one socket on your Soulwrest while allowing to support your skeletons better. I´ll go into more detail in the skills section but save to say this pushes your minions a lot. While hungry loop isn´t expensive in itself you will need better rares to make up for the missing stats on the ring. 3. A shaper Amulet with the suffix "Grants Level 22 Haste Skill". Not only is this better than a corrupted lvl 21 Haste it also opens up one more Socket to either run some support Specters or an Animated Guardian. Main issue is to find a shaper amulet which has the suffix while being decently rolled. 4. Any Stygian Vise with good roles. Abysall jewels good nuff said only issue is that it is far easier to pick up a normal life belt with amazing stats in trade. 5. Ring & Amulet with flat and percentage based mana regen. Nothing special in itself but if you manage to pick up goods ones it would allow you to save ~5 passive points on mana regen on the tree to invest into two more jewels. Example gear
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Just as an example my current betrayal gear with an investment of around 2.5 ex.~
Skills&Links
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Soulwrest
Summon Skeleton: Like any real summoner socket space is precious which is why the easier way is to just let the skeletons share some supports with phantasms. Don´t forget to pick up the Vaal Version since it makes general mapping and develing a lot more fun. If you decide to pick up Hungry Loop you can replace Summon Skeleton with Faster Casting. Minion Damage: Such an obviously great support that I almost forgot to mention it. Added Fire Damage: Scales well not just with the physical base but also elemental equilibrium. Elemental Focus: The build stacks a lot of elemental damage despite the physical base so obvious choice. Controlled destruction: Doesn´t support your skeletons but more damage is more damage and phantasm are your heaviest lifters. Phantasm on Kill: For magical reasons this support increases your phantasm count to 20. So far this hasn´t been changed but in the worst case one can just slot something different and the build will still work well enough since it doesn´t just rely on phantasms. Keep in mind that a 4-link is enough on Soulwrest since your skeletons won´t benefit much from summon phantasm on kill and controlled destruction.
Kitava's Thirst
Spirit Offering:Obvious reasons - just check the mechanics sections above if you are wondering. Enfeeble: Taking less damage is always good, nuff said. Projectile Weakness: Due to the nature of the build a lot of different damage sources are getting mixed here which limits the curse options. At least Projectile Weakness scales all of your phantasm & unearth damage but you could replace it for temporal chains if you wanna feel safer. Raise Zombie: What where did zombies come from? Well at the end of the day the build scales a bunch of minion damage and with Kitiavas Thirst they turn into a free cast. Hard to argue with 78k dps on a single slot without additional effort. You could try to replace it with other utilities but outside of a third curse not much comes to mind.
Chest
6L is needed to reach the threshold for Kitava's Thirst without useing Voidbringer or similiar mana cost raising options. In addition hybrid es&ev chest is recommended for rolling the right socket colours. Unearth: The magic button which triggers like half your build. The supports are all focused around reaching the 100 mana bound for Kitavas Thirst (which you will with Unearth lv 19) and spawing the max count of corpses per count (ai 10). GMP: Main point is to increase the corpse count per cast but of course it helps spread your damage. Spell echo: The second cast from spell echo doesn´t trigger Kitava but it does get the corpse number up to 10 and comes with a juciy 1.4 mama multipler. Also helps the unearth dps which is always nice. The animation lock is a slight annoyance though. Arcan Surge: Cast speed, damage and a lot of mana regen - can´t ask for more. Only black mark is the low mana multipler of 1.1 which forces one to use some other high costs supports. Controlled Destruction: 1.3 mana multipler + decent damage boost. Another option would be life leech but it would hurt your damage quite a bit. Poison Support: The black sheep of the bunch. Basicly just here for the 1.35 multipler but it does also offer some decent damage since Unearth does Physical damage. If you find a better replacement go ahead - I sure didn´t without gimping dmg or removing Arcane Surge. Mana cost options To reach 100 mana cost with this support setup Unearth lvl 19 would be required which at earliest would require player lvl 68. There are plently of other options however. Just two as an example here. 1.) Unearth lvl 15 / GMP / Spell Echo / Arcan Surge / Summon Phantasm On Kill and Voidbringer with at least 67% increased mana cost. This a 5L setup useable as early as lvl 57 which also allows one to Summon Phantasm before picking up Soulwrest. 2.) Unearth lvl 18 with Slower Projectile instead of Poison Support. The 1.4 Multiplier of Slower Projectile pushes the needed Unearth level down by one while useing the same sockets. Only downside is that even a lvl 1 Slower Projectile slows down your travel speed via Unearth & Bodyswap.
Gloves
Hatred: Dmg... good - espescially when it scales of physical damage and Elemental Equilibrium. Generosity: Even more dmg but more importantly it prevents your Unearth from doing cold damage which would ruin your Elemental Equilibrium triggers. Bodyswap: Main movement, you will use it more than walking. Clarity: Keep it low lvl but don´t link it to generosity. Gives some needed mana regen and additional boost via Commander of Darkness.
Boots
4L with CWDT lvl1 It is important here to not go over the 38 lvl req for lvl 1 CWDT on any gems. Another thing is gem order here since you want to trigger your Desecrate before spirit offering. Cast When Damage Taken: Lvl1 - here to save your ass and speed things up. Desecrate: Lvl 7 Additional corpses for spirit offering which are basicly your emergency rations. Spirit Offering: Lvl 8 You take 500 dmg - you heal 500 es + even more cast speed. Not a bad deal. Immortal Call: Lvl 3 Phys damage hurts mkay so this may save your butt on occassion.
Unset ring
Haste: Another good dmg aura - you could also link it to generosity but I prefer the quality of life it gives to your own cast speed.
Other unset ring
This one is only open without Hungry Loop. Golem, Guardian, spectres or normal stat ring - all are fine choices. Animate Guardion on some support uniques (Dying Breath, Leer Mask, Victarios Flight) makes a fine choice since Spirit Offering also "heals" your mininon. If you use Hungry Loop than you can go for Summon Skeleton / Minion Damage / Melee Physical Damage / Maim / Ruthless Blow . Leveling
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General advice 1.Till level 55 Raise Zombie and Raginig Spirit will be your bread and butter for clearing while Summon Skeleton handles the thougher encounters. Use any 4L you find and throw any and all damage supports on those three skills. 2. Grab an Unearth gem after Killing Brutus. It is important to start leveling it early and not hit any dexterity barriers. 3. You should keep leveling the first clarity you get to sustain Kitavas Thirst starting level 55. Once you hit full build replace it again for a low level clarity. 4. After completing Act 3 A Fixture of Fate buy any gems you are still missing for this build and slot as many as you can manage. 5. For Asendencies the order should go Commander of Darkness -> Mistress of Sacrifice -> Invoker -> Bone Sculptor 6. This is just good advice period but for the love of anything good hit the trade after completing Act 5 and buy two rings to max your resists for like 2 Alchs. Level 55 Level 55 is the first major deviation from a normal summoner. Buy Kitavas Thirst, Pure Talent, Voidbringer (with at least 55% increased mana cost) and 5L Chest with 3 Blue & 2 Green sockets from trade. Throw Unearth into the Chest and Link it to GMP, Spell Echo, Controlled Destruction and Summon Phantasm on Kill. Also kick Raging Spirit for Unearth for dealing with weaker mobs. Skeletons are still your main source against the thougher encounter though. Your build should look similar to this: Path of Building PasteBin Level 55 Passive Tree Level 55 This will feel a little akward at first due to the low cast speed but it will pick up once you complete the Cruel Labyrinth for Mistress of Sacrifice. After cruel Lab you may also consider to start running your CWDT-Link if you have the socket space. Level 66 Version A: With Level 65-66 comes the transition into full build. Drop the Voidbringer for a 6L Chest (3b&3g) once Unearth reaches lvl 18 and get your Soulwrest. But I can´t afford Soulwrest yet?!!? Version B: Damn those countless Soulwrest builds. ;> Okay there is an alternativ till you scrap togther the needed currency. Keep the Voidbringer (here the lower the increased mana cost the better) but stil transition into full build with a 6L but instead of Controlled Destruction you socket Phantasm on Kill and instead of Slower Projectile go for Lesser Poison. This will keep your mana cost to a bearable level while not hurting your dps too much. As replacment for Soulwrest either buy any cheap 5L 2h Weapon for your Skeletons or if you expecting to stick to it for a while Severed in Sleep & Victario's Charity. This way Unearth in combination with the Phantasms will be your Map clearer while your skeletons will handle any bosses. Keep in mind though that this is a gimped version of the build - it will probably carry you just fine into yellow maps and maybe beyond but your general clear speed will suffer for it. Videos
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Izaro Uber Lab Cast Speed Demonstration Tier 14 Map Breachlord Tull I will add endgame content from betrayal as I go along. Damn, writing this all up and formatting took the better part of my day (Edit: At this point multiple days). This better be useful to someone or else... not sure what else but someday, somewhere an else may or may not happen. Shoutout to thegrocerygod for his guide here. It allowed me to cut some of the pointless distractions of my build. I will update the build if any relevent discoveries prop up during the betrayal. So long, happy carnage!  TL;DR: Cows can start flying by socketing cats on crit in a fishing pole which makes Kitava quite sad. Last edited by Nlimqusen on Dec 23, 2018, 8:16:09 AM Last bumped on Feb 9, 2019, 12:25:24 AM
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Looks interesting, always heard that it was "impossible" to sustain Kitavas thirst for anything but utility. But hey, if nobody tries how would you know!
Im looking forward to seeing some video of how the gameplay looks. Its kinda hard to imagine! :) IGN: EMIRINE Last edited by Tecke on Dec 6, 2018, 5:06:29 PM
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" Yeah, I kept reading the same but once one tries to build for mana regen it is actually quite silly how easy it is to stack it espescially thanks to Arcane Surge, Pure Talent and the stacking between flat & percentage based mana regen. My guess is this is either based on outdated information or the kind of misleading wiki entry. " Stay tuned for tomorrow than I´ll try to capture some footage and upload it in the evening. In essence it boils down to lots of explosions, flying body parts, very sparkly minions and a laser like unearth stream. | |
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Hey OP,
Thanks for the nice build guide. As someone who tried and failed to make a kickass Kitavas build during delve, kudos if you have managed it. Some questions: - How are you proccing lightning EE and not fire EE? - Have you tried bodyswap in the Kitavas helmet, or immortal call in there? - What are you planning for the hungry loop? - How is the lag? Suggestion: Dream fragments and careful planning jewel should mostly solve your dex and mana issues Cheers, Looking forward to vids! |
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" Unearth does only physical damage so with the help of a Jewel "Added x lightning damage to spells" it will only trigger lightning EE. Bodysawp will on occasion trigger fire EE but Unearth will overwrite that one almost immediatly. " Haha yes at least for Bodyswap and it is awful. It mostly just starts teleporting you "randomly" around till you have cleaned up every single corpse on the screen. I didn´t try immortal call since it has a base cd of 3 sec and would achieve about the same as on the CWDT Link. However now that you mention it there may be some interesting alternativ if one finds a decent way to generate endurance charges for this build. " Summon Skeleton, Minion Damage, Meele Physical Damage, Maim and the last one is a toss up between Ruthless Blow and Minion Life depending on how fast they die during the more difficult boss fights. " On low settings it runs well enough even on my 500€ Laptop altough the game downscales my resolution a lot since it seems to run into issues with so many exploded corpses (just compare the two screenshots in the guide and you´ll see what I mean). It runs completly fine on my desktop which is somewhere on the higher midtier level. " I actually forgot about the mana regen on Dream fragments. It is worth considering but the build only runs 161% increased life from the tree so you wanna grab as many life on gear as possible. I guess I´ll try some routing in saved passiv points vs losing another rare slot. As for careful planning I don´t see enough upsides I would rater role another life + minon damage jewel. Dexterity is a suffix role which mostly just competes for res roles on gear but the build already gives 48% res all in itself so it is easy to spare tow-three suffix roles on dex. Last edited by Nlimqusen on Dec 7, 2018, 3:31:10 AM
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Took me a bit longer but I have added some gameplay footage.
Keep in mind that this a rerolled standard character so the gear and gems aren´t quite optimized. Just for fun I also added a little cast speed demonstration. Tier 14 Map Breachlord Tull Cast Speed Demonstration Footage from endgame in betrayal will follow dependend on how much spare time I will manage to scratch togther. ;) Last edited by Nlimqusen on Dec 8, 2018, 8:34:35 PM
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Guide Updates, yay!
1. Expanded the leveling section and added a part for what to do if you can´t afford Soulwrest early in the league. 2. Expanded the build section with some reasoning, explanations and a lvl 55 snapshot. 3. Restructured the equipment sections to make them more readable & informativ. 4. Added a bunch more wiki links to make it easier on newer players. 5. Misc stuff, typos, phrasing etc. As far as betrayal discoveries go there isn´t too much yet for this build. There seems to be some interesting unveiled crafts (like base mana regen). Also the new unique "The Queens Hunger" is a curious find altough it probably won´t fit into this build but I could see a potential spin off here. Last edited by Nlimqusen on Dec 11, 2018, 5:28:30 AM
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Do you have any suggestions for endgame Gear? I have 7 ex to spend but dont really know on what.
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" Main option would be to upgrade body armour/boots/ring/amulet for gear with more life & es since the recasting of spirit offering scales great with either. Otherwise you could consider a 6L Shavronne's Wrappings since Chaos damage by passes most of the recovery for this build BUT investing in more life & chaos res would be more effective cost wise and against other damage sources. As for pushing more damage the options are kind of limited. Most obvious one would probably be to pick up a great ring & amulet with flat & percentage based mana regen & good defences and reroute the passive tree for less mana regen and more jewels. Other options would be with lvl 21 Summon Phantasm on Kill which gives you one more Phantasm or lvl 21 Summon Skeleton with 20% Quality BUT those ain´t really cost effective. I guess I´ll theorycraft some more endgame options this weekend and update my guide with my conclusions - there may be more drastic options if I consider rerouting the tree more heavily. | |
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More updates.
1.) Added video for Izaro Uber Lab 2.) Build change: Replaced Slower Projectile for Poison Support. The mana cost just about works out with the Poison Support while it does add some damage. Slower Projectile does more damage up front but after some more testing even a lvl 1 Slower Projectile does slow your movement down via Unearth&Bodyswap which makes the trade off worth it. 3.) Expanded the Gear Sections with a seperation of basic and end game gear recommendations. Also added some example gear with my current setup in betrayal. 4.) Expanded the skills sections a little with some more explizit recommendations for how to achieve the needed 100 mana cost for Kitava's Thirst and some basic suggestion for useing The Hungry Loop. Last edited by Nlimqusen on Dec 23, 2018, 8:27:39 AM
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